Sidebar: Strife in the fast lane - Click to view Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt secured his claim as the world’s fastest human in August when he ran 100 meters in 9.58 seconds, reaching a top speed of nearly 28 miles per hour. One day, no doubt, someone will sprint faster still. Perhaps by then, scientists may better understand why all speed records made have eventually been broken. Statisticians have long tried to calculate the upper limits of human speed. One recent estimate, published last year in the Journal of Experimental Biology, put the quickest possible time for 100 meters at 9.48... (p. 26)

OK, OK, a plant can’t really look a person in the eye and share its thoughts. But after a strange couple of days, I’m almost ready to commune with vegetable matter. A string of wet, pinkie-tip–sized green leaves sits on a paper plate in front of me, and I begin to think that this little sprig and I are both wondering, “You? What in the world are you doing here?” I’m a terrestrial vertebrate rocking slightly from side to side on a research ship more than 100 kilometers west of the tip of Florida, near the Tortugas Ecological Reserve. I’m tagging along with marine biologists on... (p. 22)

The upcoming Copenhagen negotiations will take steps toward an international, climate-stabilizing treaty. (p. 16)

View the word search for this feature. Being surrounded by sharks may sound like a bad thing, but scientists say sharks are actually a good sign of ocean health. Even knowing that, Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and National Geographic Fellow, was a little nervous when he first dived at Kingman Reef, the heart of a massive, newly protected area south of Hawaii now called the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. "The first time I jumped in the water, as soon as the bubbles cleared, my heartbeat doubled—there were a dozen sharks swimming around us and so many corals on the botto...

Ulf Leonhardt is riding high these days, with a new award from the Royal Society of Great Britain to further develop his ideas on how to make things in plain sight disappear. Born in East Germany and now occupying the theoretical physics chair at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, Leonhardt is among the leaders of the worldwide race to realize an old dream of science fiction: cloaking devices. They would steer light or other electromagnetic waves around them like water around a stone in a smooth stream, leaving nary a ripple of difference in the flow. Such things, letting light swish ... (p. 18)

For chimpanzees living in a forest surrounding the village of Bossou in Guinea, cracking nuts is a serious task with important steps. They are: First, lug large rocks to a spot near a nut-bearing tree, such as an oil palm. Next, gather the nuts and place them on the rocks. Then, obtain a smaller, graspable rock. Finally, smash the armored treats and let the shells fly. As clutches of apes pound away with devastating precision, these nut bashers create an unholy din akin to a human rock band. In fact, these West African chimps rock out in a surprising way. In this corner of the jungle, chimp... (p. 24)

Scientists are engineering microscopic viruses to help in the building of smaller, lighter power supplies for a variety of devices.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, hordes of readers are reveling in On the Origin of Species, which sets forth the case for evolution via natural selection. Others are poring over The Voyage of the Beagle, the chronicle of Darwin’s five-year, round-the-world expedition. It’s probably safe to say, however, that only die-hard Darwinistas are cracking the spine on his last book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits. In this work, which Darwin himself described as “a curious little book,” he discu... (p. 22)

After spending an afternoon with François Lutzoni, it’s hard to understand why more sports teams aren’t named for lichens. Or why lovers bother with roses instead of sending a dozen fruticose lichen thalli. Lichens, Lutzoni explains, form when living organisms mingle intimately and become something more complex, capable and gorgeous than they could ever be alone. A long-time classic in discussions of taxonomically odd couples, lichens may form even more bizarre households than specialists had thought. Lutzoni’s lab at Duke University in Durham, N.C., among others, is using DNA analy... (p. 16)

A well-polished mirror reflects the world faithfully back to the viewer’s eyes. But break that mirror into billions of nanosized chunks and each tiny silver sliver would not reflect the world with such fidelity. Instead of bouncing back to the viewer, the light would be sucked into the surface of the nanochunk like a genie into a bottle. When it hits the surface of a scrap of metal, light can set off a wave in the free electrons hanging out on the metal’s surface. This wave carries the light along like a surfer riding on an electron sea. The light-and-electron hybrid is called a surfac... (p. 26)

Giant mammals went extinct thanks to climate, comet and people

In a lab at MIT, a small black mouse named Buddy sleeps alone inside a box. A cone resembling a satellite dish sits atop his head. But the dish doesn’t receive signals from outer space. Instead it sends transmissions from deep inside Buddy’s brain to a bank of computers across the room. Scientists like Jennie Young eavesdrop on the transmissions, essentially reading Buddy’s mind, or at least that part of his mind occupied with a recent trip along a Plexiglas track littered with chocolate sprinkles. Young and her colleagues in Susumu Tonegawa’s laboratory are monitoring nerve cells i... (p. 16)

If Ben Franklin had been able to live by his own advice, he might have been even healthier, wealthier and wiser. But he was a notorious insomniac, rumored to have been such a poor sleeper that he required two beds so he could always crawl into one with cool sheets when he couldn’t sleep. Getting a good night’s sleep turned out to be more difficult than taming lightning, heating houses or designing bifocal specs. Today millions of people afflicted by sleep disorders know how Franklin felt. Some people can’t fall asleep even when they’re exhausted. Yet other people fall asleep when t... (p. 24)